The Hooligans met with B Co Creative Agency today who has a lot more experience in marketing and branding than we do, and I must say WHEW are we happy we did!! It was such a fantastic melding of minds! To be clear, my intentions were for a formal introductory meeting to my team with theirs as I already knew them beforehand. One of the most fantastic happenings was that they knew all the questions we have been mulling over ourselves before we even mentioned them. To me, that sort of constructive interference of wave propagation happens when you resonate with those you are around - rare, to say the least. How long we can ride this out depends on way too many factors that one can shake a stick at - or a whole forest for that matter.
The biggest take-away from our meeting today is that it reinforced the steps we've been taking to compartmentalize our efforts in creating an industry-wide, impactful presence of film within the Bay Area. In previous years, especially in the military, I was known for being the go-to guy for IT Networking as well as dealing with all the localized tech for our unit and how it related to our contractors. Before I left the military for good, I was one of two Chiefs that was trusted to do my own audits without supervision among the entire base - an area that regularly houses 50K servicemen/servicewomen (when I was first assigned there, my unit was known for being the Problem Child). The biggest point I made while being there was that if I couldn't fix a problem personally, then I could point you in the direction of who could and the process it would take to escalate the issue properly. In the film world, I have been focusing on recreating that along with placing people in positions where we can optimize their skills and abilities. Needless to say, it's been a long, long journey thus far especially since independent film is more often the "anti" to militaristic structure - that's not to assume that we want to run it like the military... we don't.
What we do want is to bridge the gap between the Creative and the Business. Most indies want to find success in the Creative alone but fail on the Business side. There's no balance and we often find people tend to overcompensate with micromanagement, lack of delegation, holding all the cards, play "secret squirrel," etc. When your ego clouds your judgment, the roads to success shut down. Those indies that are doing this as a hobby rather than a livelihood are just fine, but the majority of filmmakers we know want it to be their primary source of income. To accomplish that, they need to see it as a business first. The biggest misconception is that treating this art medium as a business undermines the creative endeavor - that's just not true at all. Like most things, the issue is not purely black-and-white and actually resides in a gray area. It can exist as both, and it regularly does.
We're pretty optimistic with what we want to do, and we're so very open to continuing our growth and tilting / shifting where we need to in order to bring this to fruition. We're hoping you come along with us.
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